Conveyors of the type mentioned in the introduction are used, in particular, in baggage-sorting areas and in baggage-reclaim areas of airports. Passengers can pick up their baggage there after landing, the baggage being made available there on the conveyor. Conveyors of the generic type are also used in the check-in area, that is to say where the passenger hands over the baggage. Depending on the architecture and the size of the building, the conveying path often follows winding routes, in which case link chains which transmit the propelling force have to be guided, in some cases, around narrow-radius curves and, in some cases, also have to negotiate changing gradients. It is thus occasionally the case that the jointing of such a link chain is insufficient. The high weights of the items for conveying and of the conveyor itself, and the pronounced deflections of the conveying path, additionally give rise to considerable forces on the link chain, on which the conveying elements are fastened, as it circulates.
EP 0 629 566 A2 has already disclosed a conveyor of the above construction, although its link chain has a three-dimensional flexibility which is insufficient for many applications. Another conveyor of the type mentioned in the introduction is known from EP 0 869 086 B1, in the case of which the link chain has joints with successive axes of rotation arranged perpendicularly to one another in each case. One disadvantage of this arrangement is that the effective length of the link, that is to say the spacing between two joints of the chain, is doubled here in respect of a certain direction of curvature because, for example in the case of the link chain bending in a horizontal direction, only every second link is capable of deflection and the ones located therebetween, as it were, remain stiff. Accordingly, the angularity of the polygonal extent of the chain increases disadvantageously over curved regions. This results in very high loading on the joints which, on account of the axis of rotation being oriented parallel to the plane of curvature, remain, as it were, stiff. Overall, the chain drive is subject to increased wear since the jerky advancement on account of the polygonal shape of the deflections results in comparatively high forces in the chain strands. Both chains involve very high-outlay and are heavy; they require a correspondingly large amount of installation space and are expensive. The chains are difficult to maintain, in particular the removal of damaged chain links is time-consuming and laborious, in which case the conveyors are unavailable for operation for a relatively long period of time.